The Body is a (clear) Place in the Space, part 2: The Space


Premiere 4.10.2018
Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki



About



“But we know that behind every image (experience) revealed, there is another image (experience) more faithful to reality, and in back of that image (experience) there is another, and yet another behind the last one, and so on, up to the true image (experience)  of the absolute mysterious reality that no-one will ever see (experience).”
Michelangelo Antonioni

The Space is a work for six dancers, two live musicians and several video projections. It is a work about spatial and bodily metamorphoses that create a multi-sensory dialogue between the space, the performers and the viewer. The performers use the whole of the auditorium, blurring the boundary between the audience and the stage and creating new ways of looking at the space. The work invades the Kiasma Theatre stage in a sensitive, soft, minimal and sometimes arrogant way. The gaze, movement and speech of the performers makes the space become visible and alive.

The Space is a performance about emptiness, space and outer space, absence and presence. It is about the connection between seeing and understanding the meaning. And about a dog. The performers create visions of body, mind and voice transformations and return these to the beginning where nothing has stayed the same. The Space creates a seemingly chaotic performative landscape that reflects glimpses of beauty and terror. The layeredness of the space merges with the layeredness of the performance mixing together stories, fiction, everyday and realism.

The Space departs from three intertwining themes: the haptic space creating movement, the simultaneity of the past and the future and the collision of sensoriality and thinking. The work draws inspiration from the films of Bela Tarr, a Hungarian film director, and architect Juhani Pallasmaa’s article Hapticity and Time.

The Body is a (clear) Place in the Space is a two-part performance series happening in the years 2017-18. The first part is a duet called The Body where Liisa Pentti performs with the Danish performance artist Bo Madvig. The duet premiered in Helsinki in September 2017.




Credits



Concept and direction
Liisa Pentti

Dancers
Rea-Liina Brunou, Johanna Ikola, Carita Lähteenmäki, Maija Reeta Raumanni, Satu Rekola, Nina Viitamäki

Music and sound design
Jukka Kääriäinen & Co

Musicians
Jukka Kääriäinen and Eero Savela

Lighting design
Meri Ekola
Costume design
Tua Helve

Spatial design
Salla Salin

Producer
Inari Pesonen

Production
Liisa Pentti +Co, Kiasma Theatre

Supported by
Svenska Kulturfonden, Oscar Öflunds Stiftelse, Arts Promotion Centre Finland, City of Helsinki, Eskus – Performance Center, Finnish Cultural Foundation and O Espaco do Tempo residency centre.







Photos: Pirje Mykkänen / Kansallisgalleria